Nha Trang, the best/worst of times

Yeah, i know its been a while.

And i HAD tonnes of beautiful pics to send. But now, you'll jsut have to look at the text. Please remember that this is more for me and not for you to remember. Now that i don't have the pics (i'll tell you why later) i need a written record of my time here.

We left Hoi An early for Danang to catch the morning train south to Nha Trang, the party capital of Vietnam. Down here, its all beach, tourists, clubs, dive shops and resteraunts. It didn't take us long to find a cheap place to stay and we were out clubbing/partying the first night. After so many nights without a good party i must admit i went a little overboard. Regardless, i still made it home in one piece even after getting ripped off by the moto taxi guy, but whatever.

Next day, after recovering (by this time it was late in the afternoon) went out and walked the beach for a bit, then clubbed again at night. But of course i have taken it a lot easier since then. Its much cheaper to party here than it is in thailand and the people are quite fun. And of course we're in the foreign clubs so any locals there can speak a bit of english, but nothing great.

The next day we decided we need to send our passports out for visa extensions. Our 30 days runs out on Nov 19th so it was send now or rush to Cambodia. It takes 5 days to send our passports to Saigon and come back. So we had a 2 day buffer zone. Fortunately our passports are back now without any issues and now we can stay till Dec 19th (well, i can at least).

I did my first two fun dives with a company called Vietnam explorer. I finally had a chance to test my underwater case (12 m, 40ish feet) as well and it performed spectacularly! Vis was not the best, about 6 m, but for me, it was absolutely fine. There were 3 of us open waterers, 1 dive master and 1 instructor. My friend and the other tourist (korean girl) both had about 5 dives worth of experience. I was the only true noob. But i had no problems at all. Wet suit didn't fit the best and i did end up getting very cold but diving with a wet suit is so much more fun than with a dry suit. You can float upside down, swim in a loop, do basically whatever you want! All my skills came back in the first 10 min of the first dive and i quickly became neutrally bouyant. Its wicked to float upsidedown looking at coral reefs and holding my camera out for that perfect shot.

We came across the usual assortment of animals. Clown fish, angel fish, parrot fish, starfish, puffer fish, and corals. I had a great pic of Nemo and his dad too. No really, it was a pair of clown fish, one big, one small, just sitting in their anenome, posing for me. We also came across a family of these little black fish living in some type of sponge and we all surrounded them and just stared. It was quite fun to watch them when they calm down and go about their usual routine.

The second dive was also a great dive, but this time i left the camera to my buddy so i could focus more on my breathing (bouyancy control) and just experience the life/view more. The coolest thing we saw on the second dive was a yellow spotted eel. It was again just sitting there staring at us. It was looking up at me while i was looking up at him (i was floating upside down). The dive master even tried to pet it! Not somethign i would do as these guys are known to bite and can take fingers off easily.

So all in all the dives were lots of fun (for me at least, my friend was used to 20 m vis). I just wish i had the pics to show, but don't worry, i will be diving lots more. Julia, learning in 2 m vis was tough but well worth it. I was nervous for about the first 30 sec after my head went under the water. I had trouble sinking because of not enough weight, but that was quickly solved. I decended to the bottom, no problems equalizing, no problems with my gear either. Its a different world under the water. And without the worry of the drysuit squeeze and other problems, you can just sit there and enjoy. With the right equipment, you are truly floating and exploring a completely new world. It is like no other and although dangerous and scary at times, the experience of it all is indescribable.

08/01/05 - addition
I cannot believe i completely forgot about this! But it jsut came back to me a few days ago when i was chatting with Vicki. Its either our first dive or our second dive, but Marco got hooked by a fisherman! No really! He had a hook with a sinker attached to his wet suit when we were down there. I told him when we got back to the surface he should have went up and scared the shit out of the fisherman. Now that would have been a sight to see!

I will no longer visit aquariums to see fish. I'm going to where they live and watch them there. I think i'm going to consider nitrox or rebreather diving. I really just want to sit on the ocean floor and have the animals come up to me. But the bubbles really scare them so i guess i will have to take up free diving if i want to do that. But thats gonna be tough. Need to learn how to drop my heart beat and increase my lung capacity.

The next day we went on a boat tour of the surrounding islands. Again, a super fun trip with an absolutely hilarious host. He kept standing at the front of the boat, holding out his arms and singing the theme song to titanic. They took us out around the islands, did some swimming, tubing, drinking and tubing (open bar with wine!), and just chat with the other foreigners/locals/tourists (Nha Trang has lots of viet tourists as well). There are a surprising number of people from Vancouver here. Even more than people from TO or Montreal. I was quite surprised. But i didn't talk with them much. Nothing really to chat to them about and i'm not here to hang out wiht people from home. I spent most of the day with some duchies, a greek girl, and 3 viet local girls, 2 of which were from Ho Chi Minh, and one of which was Chinese born Viet (2nd gen) which spoke Cantonese, Mandarine, Vietnamese, Japanese, and English. She will be leaving Saigon on Dec 2 to goto Taiwan to train to become a flight attendant. If we make it there before she's gone she promised to take us around which will be a big help.

The boat was fun and all, food was good, swimming was a little cold and sorkling was pointless (we dived in the same spots the day before) but the best part was the live music! They started singing some english and viet songs for us but the best part was still to come. They decided, to make everybody feel more at home, they would sing the national anthems or popular songs of peoples countries. With the people from that country of course! We had some drunk old korean guys get up and sing, some viet people sing, and russian girls sing. But the best was when my swiss friend got called up to sing. He's from the german part of Switzerland so they sang a german song. A very popular german song apparently. One which my friend didn't know at all! It was hilarious to see him up there singing a song he had no idea to what the lyrics were. I had the whole thing on vid as well, it was quite classic! Of course after reviewing the vid, my friend was like, hey, i do know that song! Hahaha. It was quite the moment. I'll have to get the vids from the greek girl later.

The next day we decided to goto the spa. Upon arriving there we decided against the mud bath and went instead for the massage (clean of course). Quite honestly, for 100 000 VND (about 6 USD), you can get resort quality service, treatment, and surroundings for a fraction of the normal cost. After the massage (1 hr) spent the next 4 hours playing around in the heated pools, heated waterfalls, and hotsprings. There's nothing like jumping into a nice warm, mineral water pool (38 C). No chlorine so swimming with my eyes open was no problem at all. And even better, a cut on my hand from diving the other day did not sting at all in the mineral water. Also, nothing beats sitting in a warm water fall and letting the water presure massage your back, head and neck. I really want a shower like this now at home. Probably only gonna cost me about 15 000 CDN.

That night it finally rained. And did it rain. The real tropical shit. But not that i wasn't used to it, but it just really sucks. We did go out anyways (in between the torrential downpour there were a few minutes of clear skies, and i mean a few min, like 5 min). Clubbing as usual. I wanted to find the girls that we met at the spa that day.

Here is of course where things started going sour. I must admit that we've been getting pretty careless the past few days. Coming home drunk, not taking care of our valuables. And it finally bit us in the ass. Someone went into our room while we were out clubbing (or maybe when we were sleeping) and stole my camera bag. Of course i dont' care about the camera, i only care about the pictures, 1 GB worth (basically the past week). I'll buy the same camera probably in Saigon if its cheap, if not i'll wait till i get into Bangkok. At first i was really choked up about it. Because after gettting home from the resort, with the rain pounding down it would have been the perfect time to go onto the net and start backing up files to my friends portable hard drive.

Of course its here that things got worse. My friend soon discovered that his portable hdd had been taken as well. Goodbye 1 month worth of pictures. The last time i burned a DVD was in Hanoi. From there, the journey to Halong bay, and everywhere south, all gone. It really hurts. I know that i have some really good shots on my blog, but those are also the low res versions. All the hi res ones are gone. It was really, really was hurting a few days ago. BUt i'm trying to forget it now. It happened, its over. I'll contact the greek girl for some of the pics from the boat, but other than that, i think everything will have to come from my memory (and my blog).

I often think if i had gone and backed up the files would i have burned them onto a disc that night? Probably not and i have now firgured out that its pointless to dwell on the past and just look forward. But don't worry, i will get some of the pics back. Maybe about 10 %. But all my dive pics and Halong bay will be gone. Not to worry, Karabi in Thailand looks similar, and i will be diving again so i'll just have to pretend. Hahaha.

Just to get my mind off things i went and got a badly needed hair cut. Really helped to get my mind off the current situation. Force me to remember that life keeps going on by doing routine things. Hair cut cost about 4 USD with tip. Now i really look like a viet guy! I'll send the pic home soon. For people that don't know me its nothing special, but those that do i'm sure will think i look pretty different!

Note to Family, Julia, Gary
I had a wicked picture for your guys to look at but i'll just have to explain it instead. Which definetly takes the coolness out of it but whatever. On the boat cruise day, we headed out about 45 km to the small islands. On the way out, there were strange looking ferry boats coming into the bay. I looked out over the horizon and saw that they were coming from a cruise boat. Hey, thats cool i thought, didn't know that people come to vietnam on cruise ships. As we approached the massive boat i wondered, hey maybe they will stay overnight and there will be more people to party with! And if its Carnival cruise lines then it will be with young people! Was it Carnival? No. In the distance i couldn't see what it was (didn't have my glasses). But the boat looked like an old person boat. And then i thought, hey wait a minute, i've been on a old person boat. And yes, sure enough, the boat was......



......the Sapphire Princess!

Anyways, so i think i have updated up to my current point. I'm not sure what i'm going to do from here. we have extra time now, well at least I do, but my friend has a much tighter schedule to keep than I. I think i want to spend more time here. Vietnam is cheap, the scenery beautiful, people so friendly, fantastic diving (not here in Nha Trang, but an island west of Saigon), great cheap fashionable clothing, and beautiful women. What more could i ask for? I'd definetly like to have my pics back, but whatever, lesson learned, just don't do it again right?

I could stay here and intern to become a dive master (3-6 months) and dive the rest of vietnam (about 4 major locations). Maybe specalize in nitrox and underwater photography? Or maybe deep diving specialty? Hahaahhah, i'm just kidding. If i'm gonna do that then i'm doing it in Indonesia which has much better diving! =)

Don't worry, i'll come home one day!

-bk